Standing on Fishes (1999)

Being an artistic soul burdened with ideals and vision and perhaps a touch of underappreciated genius can be a vexing thing. The sculptor hero of Standing on Fishes (1999) not only has his own demons to wrestle and bills to pay, he also has a hot but hot-headed girlfriend who feels duty-bound to impress upon him the gravity of her doubts as to the direction he is allowing his creative development to take. Is it the sculptor’s fault that he is pursuing his craft in Los Angeles, the most mercenary of all modern metropolises? Is the sculptor to blame because his work catches the eye and the fancy of a hack movie director whose abundances of bad taste are matched only by the quantity and depth of his bank accounts? And if the artistic idealist chooses to prostitute his vision simply to buy some creature comforts and nonperishable luxury goods, will that hot-headed girlfriend ever learn to simply shut up and enjoy the bounty?